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If ever you doubted that a man could shed his past in one glorious moment, we present to you Arjen Robben.

Over the course of the last decade, the 29-year-old Bayern Munich star had grown to define many of the things that are wrong with the game of football. Even his admirers will admit he is an egregious diver, a whiner and a tone-deaf malcontent fond of complaining his way off great teams.

Robben was the sort of player who’d taken remarkable physical gifts and turned them into Christmas after Christmas of coal in international football’s stocking.

A year ago, he goaded a teammate into a locker-room fistfight at halftime. He publicly lashed out at Bayern’s greatest talisman, Franz Beckenbauer, because the Kaiser had once gently chided him in the press.

Nearing the end of a remarkable Bayern campaign that already includes a league title, and could soon become a treble, DerSpiegel thanked him with a love letter entitled The Insufferable Arjen Robben.

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His uncompromising negativity makes him almost unique — a dispensable indispensable who’s spent years daring teams to tire of him.

His nadir at Bayern came at last year’s Champions League final, when he missed a penalty that would have won the Bavarians a fifth European crown.

Robben was one of those who stood out in big games for entirely the wrong reasons, including an inept performance of epic petulance in the 2010 World Cup final.

Bayern Munich outlasted their country cousins Borussia Dortmund 2-1 in a swaggering, end-to-end game whose tempo never abated. The form for these contests is to provide two great teams, and have one either thoroughly dominate or have both crouch in their own halves waiting for penalties.

That template was broken from the outset, as Dortmund came storming straight at the favoured team. Having not been given the script beforehand, Bayern staggered under their early pressure. Eventually, they adjusted to the rhythm and matched style with style.

Through their ebullient play, the Germans in both strips proved their country ought to have first dibs on all future contests. Teams from every other nation ought first to sign a waiver promising to play with this much ambition in order to be considered.

Dortmund missed several chances in the first half, as did Bayern, and often through Robben. He is the most maddeningly one-footed great player in the world. Three times he streaked in from the right wing on goal. Three times he botched it by trying to play the ball onto his favoured left foot. He was headed toward another personal disaster.

Then, in the second half, Bayern assumed control of the ship. One of their counters finally clicked. Franck Ribery knocked a ball through to Robben. For once, he didn’t turn wildly and blaze away. Instead, he drifted cunningly toward the goal line, slipping a ball back across the goal to a lurking Mario Mandzukic. 1-0 Bayern.

Shortly thereafter, the requisite controversy. Dortmund unleashed their best player on the day, Marco Reus, into the Bayern box to chase a bounding ball. Bayern’s Dante badly misjudged the bounce, and ended up planting his studs into Reus’ midsection. While his foot was still lodged in flesh, he managed to throw up his hands in the international symbol of “Who, me?”

Dortmund converted the 68th-minute penalty. But Dante, already sitting on a yellow, went uncarded and was allowed to stay on the pitch. Referee Nicola Rizzoli can cross the Rhineland off his list of vacation destinations.

Knotted at one, it looked as if it might end in penalties — the olive on top of our Champions League sundae. But Robben intervened.

Up until the 89th minute of Sunday’s game, he had taken 24 shots in four Champions League finals without finding the net. His 25th wiped clean an accumulated stain.

It was a goal of uncanny class, crashing through the stunned Dortmund backline and onto a Ribery pass. Robben rounded the keeper and laid the ball softly back across the face of the goal.

Dortmund’s Mats Hummels, amongst what seemed like a dozen ball-watchers inside the area, dropped his head disconsolately when he saw the slow drift of the shot. Had he or any one of his teammates pursued the play, they might have scooped the ball off the line.

But as they had all game long, they were left largely gawking at the game’s best player. After scoring, Robben couldn’t resist slowly peacocking in front of the Wembley crowd, shouting what looked like, “Right? Right?”

But his tears at the end seemed human enough.

Once his career ends, Robben will likely be recalled in admiring but ashen terms by many — an unlovable player who could have won hearts as well as minds if he’d only been able to contain the Grinch within.

But now he will also be remembered as the man who took control of and then won one of the great games of this generation.

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